Goodell says many players don’t want a bye week before Thursday games

Posted by Michael David Smith on February 2, 2018, 9:10 AM EDT

AP

Thursday Night Football is here to stay, as this week’s deal with FOX makes clear. But can the NFL do anything to accommodate players who say playing on Sunday and then again on Thursday is too hard on their bodies?

One proposal that’s often floated is giving every team its bye before its Thursday night game. But NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says he has heard from players who don’t like that idea.

“I think the reaction is clearly mixed within the players that I’ve spoken to,” Goodell said. “Obviously, most players don’t like a short week, but they sure do love the 10 days that come after that. And in fact, I can remember, distinctly, several conversations about, ‘This is like a mini-bye, so don’t put the Thursday game close to the bye week, because that’s something we want to make sure that we have separated, so we can get the benefits of both of those.'”

It seems unlikely that the NFL will implement a schedule that guarantees teams a bye week before a Thursday night game, and Goodell doesn’t sound convinced that players really want that anyway.

The idea was not to move the only bye week before the Thursday games. It was to add in an extra bye week before the games. Doing so under the same time-frame would not even change league-wide revenue. Adding an extra week to complete the same games (they could drop the extra week between champ games and SB and move pro bowl back to the week after to preserve the time-line) would give the league an extra week of revenue (or would make the new TV contracts more valuable).

I suggest a conference bye week for each conference on consecutive weeks(10/11) with the order swapped every year and individual byes before each Thursday game.

“… because that’s something we want to make sure that we have separated, so we can get the benefits of both of those

That’s not players saying they don’t want a bye before a Thursday game. Their saying they don’t want to lose the benefit of both. Extend the season a week and add an additional bye, problem solved and revenue increased. This isn’t rocket science.

For the love of all that is holy, just make sure there are no more games involving a team coming off of Thursday Night Football AND a team coming off of Monday Night Football. There is absolutely no logic behind allowing that to continue.

To be honest, I’ve suspected that players don’t really want their bye week to come before a Thursday game. I think they want to enjoy a whole week off without practice somewhere during the season. They like to complain about Thursday games, but they don’t want to give up their bye week and they don’t want to give up the extra revenue on the salary cap that comes from Thursday games either. You spend enough time out in the world and you come to realize that’s just how people are. They complain about inconveniences, but they don’t want to make the sacrifices required to eliminate those inconveniences. A lot of people are like that. There are probably people like that you work with right now. You don’t want to hear it, but it might even be you.

Would it be possible to add a second bye week to the schedule? Drop a pre-season game or start everything a week early, but adding another week off could enhance competition by allowing players (and potentially star players) more time to rest and return from injury.

Looking past all the Goodell hate; I can see the players saying what he claims. Instead of two “bye” weeks back to back, they would rather have them split up a month or so apart. Makes perfect sense to me to want two “one week off” separated rather than two weeks off in a row.